There are 3 kinds of people – the 3 kinds of idiots this society is filled with.

Idiot Kind # 1: If you are this type, then life is a long train of boogie-woogie bogies, and “ignorance” is the one driving your engine. It’s thorough bliss. That’s the best one can ask for. You don’t even know you are inching towards the epilogue of your life. That’s how blessed you are with your blissful ignorance. And one fine day you are gone. Nobody misses you and of course, you don’t miss anybody either. An infinitesimal dot in the spectrum of light, lost forever.

Idiot Kind # 2: If you are this type, then its a lifetime of reflection (read it as pain), connected reflections(more pain) and awareness about a whole lot of things (even more pain).

With this kind of awareness, you cannot trust anyone else to drive your engine and so you are at the helm of everything; and you are worried about all those bogies that trust you, about their safety; You feel responsible for their well-being – this state is too stressful and it weighs you down. You may reach your destination, ensure everything is in order, but you’ve never had the time to pause and smell the roses or enjoy the scenary. When everyone around you feels you’ve “arrived,” you feel so empty and lost. You’ve literally burnt yourself out. You just don’t understand why you are here on this earth. There’s really no time to make your epilogue or epitaph interesting. Somebody ghostwrites for you, and you just take it. You are too tired to edit anything. When you are gone, a few will miss you dearly. If you have helped a few people discover themselves, then a lot of them will miss you for a few weeks. But you may not miss anything. You are happy to be gone. You are happy to don another garb, another body, in another realm of this time-space. You are a beacon in this spectrum of light, that will find place in text books and street corners as bust-head cemented figures garlanded a couple of days in a year.

Idiot Kind # 3: If you are this type, your life is like a science fiction narrative – something like “After Earth” – You come from another world. You always feel, you don’t belong here, but you are excited to be here. You are self-assured, have experienced joy; you’ve also been through a slice of fear, and you are not afraid to travel to other worlds for “experience.” You are adventurous with the awareness that everything is manageable, because you believe in your safety net. And then, the journey to this new experience, leaves you bruised and your safety net is gone. But you are not terrified.

You end-up feeling a little like Jaden Smith. You keep seeing flashes of “Danger Is Real – Fear Is a Choice”posterfor motivation.

When you just feel you have a grip of your inner fears; Just when you conclude that “fear” is just an illusion that people have passed on from one generation to the next simply because they didn’t have the tools to measure or debate it as much as you do in your own mental space, you become aware of the most important thing – That Conquering Fear leaves you purposeless; That there is nothing more in life, once you’ve figured this one thing that controls mankind.

You realize that you can either use this understanding to instill fear in others in as many devious ways as you can(and call it management / politics / governance), or you can simply use this energy and understanding to communicate that there is no such thing as “fear” – That the only thing that this society gives you “free” is fear and nothing else comes free; that fear is way too glorified by those who want to control you; And that “fear” does not even merit the handle “conquer.”

Just when you feel that you understand what Gurudev Tagore meant when he wrote, “When the mind is free and the head is held high; where knowledge is free” you realize the futility of it all!!

You figure people like to be told to do things; they like to be lead. They like to be shepherded. This is what the Testaments would’ve meant when they said that Jesus was the shepherd. He lead us all, the sheep, to safety. And being lead, wanting to be guided, and staying in herds are the combined traits that make us human, that has been passed on from one generation to the next. We were unable to conquer “fear” because we never wanted to; In fact we are the ones who nurtured it lovingly, and hence we feel responsible not to alter the paths of the genetic code, the evolution of our DNA. Every slice, every layer of this society feels fear – fear for something or the other. It is always about oppression of the body or the mind, depending on which part of the societal pyramid you are in. The higher up the societal pyramid you are, the greater is the fear of someone controlling your mind.

Its almost a loving loyalty to fear, that keeps us alive as a society and we’d never want to lose it. This loyalty to fear is what makes it hard to break the code, and replace the X-Y chromosomes with NO-FEAR variables. Its really hard. The resistance to the replacement comes from inside; from your core. Its really an insider’s job and defeating it is just wishful thinking. Maybe this is what Gurudev Tagore meant – Such a world, free of fear is what we should be calling “heaven of freedom?”

This experience of defining fear has made you realize something about you. You are beginning to see the end of your tunnel – the silver lining of this life. This realization brings a lot of clarity. You even know what should go on your epitaph: